Modern society holds various problems and health is also one of them. At the present age when scientific technology progressed, we have received the benefit of new substances, but we are also exposed to the attack of harmful reaction of the new substances. Since the number of affections such as allergic diseases as a typical modern disease increases rapidly, it is inferred that there is a limitation in maintaining health. Therefore, in order to live in modern society healthfully, it becomes important to know always our health condition and to know early the abnormalities of health condition.
As the simple methods for evaluating the physical conditions, it has been generally performed to evaluate from complexion of a subject or from the condition of one part of body such as skin. In fact, the condition of complexion or skin shows the quality of current health. However, by these evaluation approaches, the quality of the physical conditions cannot be known clearly, and it is unknown when the abnormal condition has occurred. Therefore, it is required to present an evaluation method to know the change of physical conditions objectively and moreover to know the occurrence times of abnormalities not only at present but also in past.
Although physical conditions are changing daily, it is rare to notice its change, so it is desired to express the change of the physical conditions by quantifying objectively. In order to quantify the change of the physical conditions objectively, the extracted blood etc. must be analyzed. The result of analysis shows the contents of elements that constitute the blood at this instant and cannot show variations based on time progress. Therefore, even if it becomes clear that the result of inspection is unusual, the outbreak time or elapsed time of the abnormality is unknown. On the other hand, blood has the role that maintains homeostasis, so that the abnormalities are not shown in many cases even when it is unhealthy. Moreover, great costs are needed for extracting and analyzing the blood.
The body consists of 29 kinds of elements, and since its most part is water, hydrogen occupies more than one half (60.3%), oxygen 25%, carbon 10.5%, nitrogen 2.4%, so that these four kinds of elements occupy 98.2%. The trace elements other than said elements are inorganic, and they are generally called minerals such as iron, copper, calcium and magnesium. Therefore, if these trace elements, especially level changes in trace elements making important roles in life activities are analyzed, the change of physical conditions can be known promptly and it will become possible to adopt the effective countermeasures.
Especially, although calcium is an important element that constitutes the frame of body, it plays other important roles besides this. For example, calcium element is contained in cell membrane, so that it stabilizes the structure of this membrane, and the permeability of membrane is maintained. Moreover, calcium element is a neurotransmitter relating to stimulus and contraction of muscle, and also relates to stimulus and secretion function of exocrine gland and endocrine gland.
In particular, when calcium is deficient, bony calcium begins to dissolve into blood, and it is going to keep the calcium concentration in blood at the homeostatic level. Simultaneously, calcium ion inflows takes place and the intracellular calcium concentration is raised up, even though calcium is deficient so that functions of the cells deteriorate. In general, this is called “calcium paradox”.
FIG. 15 is a diagram illustrating “calcium paradox”. The axis of abscissa expresses Ca concentrations of bone, blood serum and cytosol, and the axis of ordinate expresses the molar quantity. Calcium not only becomes the ingredient of the frame of body, but is carrying out very important roles for the body. One of them is a role of signal transmitter in nerve. Therefore, the calcium concentration [Ca] in blood balances with bony calcium concentration, and is strictly controlled to be at the homeostatic value (0.1 g in blood 1 L). Hereafter, the unit of liter is written by L.
FIG. 15A) is a conceptual diagram showing the calcium concentrations of normal state contained in bone, blood and inside of cell. The bony calcium concentration [Ca] is 10000 times [Ca] in blood serum, and the intracellular calcium concentration is 1/10000 times the [Ca] in blood serum; it is seen that calcium hardly exists in cell. Therefore, cell can quickly react to concentration change of calcium being the signal transmitter, and can make the normal work based on this reactivity.
FIG. 15B) is a conceptual diagram showing the calcium concentration in aging or calcium shortage condition. When calcium level in blood is down, calcium begins to dissolve into blood from bone being the huge storehouse of calcium, the calcium concentration in blood tends to be at the homeostatic level to maintain the neural transmission operation normally. At the same time, a cell becomes full of calcium like a Ca flood into a cell, so that function of cell deteriorates because of worsening of signal transmission by calcium, then the Ca flood causes various illnesses such as not only osteoporosis but also immunity disease, diabetes, hypertension, malignant tumor, and arteriosclerosis. As described above, in spite of calcium shortage, the phenomenon in which intracellular calcium concentration rises is apparently a contradictory phenomenon, so it is called “calcium paradox.”
FIG. 16 is a diagram showing the system by which the calcium concentration [Ca] in blood is controlled to be at the homeostatic value. When [Ca] in blood increases, calcitonin is secreted from the thyroid gland, and calcium in blood (blood serum) is deposited in bone. On the other hand, when [Ca] in blood decreases, parathyroid hormone (PTH:Parathyroid Hormone) is secreted from the parathyroid gland, and calcium is extracted from bone into blood. PTH controls the excretion of calcium to urine by acting on kidney, and promotes the absorption of calcium from intestines by activating vitamin D. Thus, PTH increases [Ca] in blood, at the same time, makes overflow of calcium in cells in the whole body scale, and becomes the cause of “calcium paradox”.
Although “calcium paradox” is apparently the contradictory phenomenon, it can be understood that calcium plays very important roles in life activity of human body. Therefore, if it can be diagnosed by a simple method whether calcium is deficient, changes of physical conditions can be predicted, and it can be used for a sick omen or a sick progress. If the concentration of PTH in blood is measured, it can be diagnosed whether calcium is deficient, but the concentration of PTH changes with a one-day cycle, and a PTH molecule is broken easily into its fragments. Moreover, since its fragments also function, measurement is not easy. As it is necessary to extract and inspect blood samples for that purpose, it has not been used widely until now because of time and cost.
It has been considered so far that there are individual differences in content of an element contained in hair and content of an element varies depending on place and time of taking hair even for the same person's hair. In order to obtain content of an element in hair, hairs of several grams were taken, and the content of each element was analyzed and obtained by atomic absorption analysis etc. However, this method measures an average value of contents of the element in hair, and the measured value is an average value at least for one month. Since the content of an element changes more quickly, it is a disadvantage that the value at the measurement time is unknown.
Also, X-ray fluorescence analysis is desirable for measuring content of each element in hair. In X-ray fluorescence analysis an electron beam or X-ray beam irradiates a sample, the generated fluorescent X-rays having the wavelength peculiar to the element is detected, and the kind and amount of elements contained in the sample are obtained. However, since the wavelength of the irradiated X-rays in the conventional method spreads widely, it overlaps with the wavelength of the generated fluorescent X-rays, so that the high sensitivity is not obtained because of the noise, so exact analysis has been difficult.
Furthermore, since the fluorescent X-rays intensity is proportional to the mass of element within the excitation beam, the data obtained depend upon hair thickness and shape. Therefore, although absolute measurement of concentration to know how much mg of the element is contained in 1 g of hair is required, it is difficult to measure the mass of the irradiated part precisely for each sample.
As a result of studying deeply for above-mentioned problem, the present inventor paid his attention especially to the hair root of head hair or body hair on the basis of assumption that “calcium paradox” due to shortage of calcium occurs similarly in every cell in the living body. Head hair or body hair is supported by hair root, and the nutrient is supplied from hair matrix cells wrapping the hair root. Therefore, when measuring the amount of calcium in this hair root, it is surmised that the shortage of calcium could be known and the research was repeated wholeheartedly.
Consequently, the present inventor proposed the diagnostic method of physical conditions based on head hair or body hair by Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-45133 (patent reference 1), and made an oral announcement of the contents of said patent reference 1 in English in the international congress of Ritsumeikan University for two days of Jan. 12 and 13 of 2004. This diagnostic method is characterized in that many trace elements contained in hair root of head hair or body hair are detected and then the content ratios among elements are calculated.
[Patent Reference 1] Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-45133